Kind of amazed by the sheer number of mind-numbingly stupid articles claiming that MP3 is dead.

They're regurgitating a press release by former MP3 patent holder Fraunhofer, which claims it's retiring its MP3 licensing program because MP3 has been surpassed by superior audio codecs such as AAC (which, the press release does not mention, Fraunhofer receives licensing royalties from).

This is, of course, bullshit; Fraunhofer retired its MP3 licensing program because its fucking patents expired. Regardless of your feelings on MP3 (I'm one of those snooty fucks who swears he can tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC, myself), the "MP3 is dead" headlines are absurd and incompetent (I mean, my God, not like I ever had much respect for Gizmodo but I expected it to be more tech-literate than this). MP3 isn't dead, it's free.

LOL, like I'm going to convert my 6000+ song files for no reason at all. And I'd imagine my collection is quite small by some people's standards.

Unlike, say, an 8-track collection, space constraints (compared to other digital song formats, never mind physical ones) and finding a working player are completely and utterly trivial. Given that long-term degradation is more or less irrelevant for any digital format (you DO make backups, right?), the three main drivers that used to push people to convert to new physical formats are gone. There's basically no reason I should have to convert my mp3s in my lifetime (and thank god for that).

I guess there's still cultural pressure for audiophiles to seem current in front of friends, but having a digital music player is just having a digital music player - your file format isn't a visible (or relevant) thing. If you're throwing a party your guests won't stare at your speakers and notice you're still using mp3s the way they would a pile of 8-track tapes.

Yeah, and honestly most of the complaining about the inferiority of the MP3 format predates 192K becoming the standard bitrate. And you can't beat it for sheer compatibility. (Especially now that Linux distros can all include it right out of the box.)

That said, I ripped all my CDs to FLAC and I've got a FiiO. But you don't want to be like me.

Mongrel wrote:(you DO make backups, right?)

Does syncing your music collection across three computers count?What if one of them is storing them on a RAID1 array and keeping rolling snapshots?...what if none of them have ECC RAM?

An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said.

The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a "Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials," cited a single anonymous source.

These types of stories are typically reviewed by several departments within CNN -- including fact-checkers, journalism standards experts and lawyers -- before publication.

This breakdown in editorial workflow disturbed the CNN executives who learned about it.

In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, investigative unit members were told that the retraction did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong. Rather, it meant that "the story wasn't solid enough to publish as-is," one of the people briefed on the investigation said.

I'm not the only guy reminded of CBS's fuckup in 2004, covering a forged memo about Bush deserting his National Guard service.

The Russia story is far too big for it to die off after one journalistic mistake, but this is sloppy and hurts the credibility of the entire Russia investigation in the public's eyes. And that's important, because regardless of what Mueller finds, the only way Trump goes down is if public opinion is stacked against him -- hard, significantly harder than it is now, hard enough to pose a significant threat to the Republican Party.

Adam Johnson at FAIR wrote:With a major publication like Politico expressly telling its reporters to avoid criticism of “physical attacks on journalists and white supremacy” on social media—so as to not appear “partisan”—one is compelled to ask, of what use is the pretense of “objectivity”? In an attempt to balance the scale, the media put their thumb on it, overemphasizing the threat of antifa while playing down an emerging far right that, in addition to having just killed someone, is in tacit alliance with the most powerful man on earth.